Nothing Less Nothing More

What do Insane Clown Posse and Killwhitneydead have in common, besides both being American groups that feature a name that includes 3 words? The answer is the Michigan-based clown duo is the only group I’ve ever came across to actually dual-release two albums on the same day. I am certain the fact that both units operate on their own self-maintained labels has something to do with it, considering no label owned by a third party would probably ever allow such a thing like this to happen. Anyway, yeah this album is the first of two albums that North Carolinian beasts Killwhitneydead released simultaneously on the same day, the other being a lesser interesting record titled Hell to Pay. So for that reason, I decided to review the better of the two.
Compared to the former, this album is a lot more memorable, less sloppily written and overall contains better songs.

From a observant standpoint on the surface, this band might come across more of a novelty. But digging in, you’ll find a lot of solid musical merit inside of the band’s sample-heavy death metal-tinged metalcore style. Killwhitneydead play deathcore with lots of riffs extracted from varying genres (traces of melodeath and power metal are just two that you'll find thrown in here) along with lots of breakdowns, and man it’s awesome on the songs that do it right. Occasionally you’ll come across more mediocre tracks (particularly prevalent on Hell to Pay as explained above), but here this album executes what they’re best at on a majority of the track listing.

I remember the first time I heard this band, it was like 2008 or 2009. Back then I believed deathcore was more formulaic as I wanted to believe, but KWD did something so incredibly DIY and man did it leave a impression on me at the time. This band was memorable for all the right reasons. On this album, the band does breakdowns and riffs even better than the more-serious bands in the genre, a lot of the riffs here are very groove-oriented which bring a band like Chimaira to mind more than anything while Matt Rudzinski’s raspy snarles concerning themes such as love and revenge seal the deal about what this band is about. To fully break down these breakdowns (haha) one must maintain a love for a good breakdown and also understand how trademark it is to the deathcore genre. Man, KWD really do know how write some punishing moments here in that regard, so you can check off breakdowns from the quality checklist as they absolutely do not disappoint in that factor. The riffs are definitely some of the best moments on the disc, just by listening to a handful of these songs it quickly becomes no secret that the two guitarists have wide music interests and influences. Oh yeah and you bet your ass there's solos, overall it becomes apparent that these guys are practically talented musicians. There's just way too many moments where I was headbobbing along to some extravagant leads or overly-catchy brodude breakdown. It's as fun as it sounds.

The vocals are definitely something I need to touch on because my favorite quality about these vocals is that the lyrics are clearly understandable without having to have the lyric sheet readily available (which is a common practice for deathcore fans who would for some reason care about lyrics). The well-pronounced style that Rudzinki does here sounds more sinister than brutal. He has his own style. He doesn’t sound like Mitch Lucker or Phil Bozeman or any vocalist that a high school kid would be impressed by, but he still sounds awesome, plus his most renown quality would probably be the fact that he’s so damn good at writing quotable one-liners over some of these breakdowns (“YOU SAID YOU ALWAYS WANTED FLOWERS/ SO I BROUGHT YOU FLOWERS FOR YOUR GRAVE”).

I can't escape it, I absolutely must talk about the sound samples. As with all of their albums, there's lots of them here. You know how a band like Mortician is particularly noted for their heavy sample-use? KWD is like the deathcore equivalent of that. If Morticiancore somehow was a legitimate genre, Killwhitneydead would certainly be the founding artist of such a thing. The amount of samples isn’t the problem I have here, it’s more like the lack of variance. There are multiple songs with multiple samples with the same source material. I am personally not a huge movie guy, but I lost count from the amount of times the film Closer is sampled on both Nothing Less Nothing More and Hell to Pay collectively. Being that I’ve watched through that movie probably more than five times it’s easy for me to memorize every single line. Just makes me think how often the same films are used for some of these other tracks. One could argue that the theme of such a film could articulate the theme for a song on this album with what is being said in the particular film at hand, but if you’re someone who has seen these films multiple times you’ll probably be groaning over how many times you hear lines ripped from a particular motion picture that you know well. It’s not like a slam death metal band where a recognized sample placed at the start of a song is a fun experience, KWD place samples before the starts of songs, and all the way throughout the song; usually using the same source material throughout the track. I'm not saying they limit one movie-per-song here, I'm just saying they'll use samples from the same film multiple times in a song. Above all, that's my only gripe with the samples here, besides that I usually enjoy the film/TV shows samples the band chooses to incorporate. I remember hearing Kill Bill sampled on this album and thinking it was the best thing the first time I heard the song "Stop Crying Just Start Dying". Also I can't go on without mentioning that there's a melodic song on this album which uses only samples and no vocals and it serves as sort of a quasi-interlude in the middle of the record. It's called "Maybe Death Is a Gift" and it's honestly not a bad idea when you listen to it.

It might seem like I've praised this album in almost every single regard, and while I do mean every word I've typed thus far, I feel like the real fault that this album is how it makes you feel by its completion time. There are so many good parts on Nothing Less Nothing More yet for some reason, you do not feel fulfilled by the album's closing track; that's where the band's biggest fault comes into play. Lets not beat around the bush here, they simply don't build on any of their best qualities. There will be so many moments on this album where you'll wish they continued using a awesome moment as a recurring element in other tracks, and they never do. You'll hear a absolutely stunning riff or solo; it only happens once. You'll hear a breakdown with some of the best chant-worthy lyrics you ever experienced, that doesn't happen enough either. Carry that on top of how almost a fifth of the album is samples, it feels relatively hollow in the end. The album from there on proves its worth that it serves as a one-time thrill only to be visited on occasion. Sure a lot of these faults have been repaired on the unit's final album Suffer My Wrath which can be perhaps considered their best album for that reason, but you'll wish Nothing More Nothing Less already had all that done right the first time.

The bottom line of this is that if you love movies, breakdowns, riffs and just, in general, music that delivers a sensation of stupid-fun then give this album a listen. Even if it's your very first time listening to Killwhitneydead, listen to this album right now from start to end. You will definitely have some fun with this release if your interest-criteria includes those 4 things.